


the properties of water (baby this is chemistry)

by themikeymonster



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Initial Matt/Karen, Karen and Foggy Drink A Lot, Kidnapping and Rescue, Minor Foggy/Marci, Multi, No Decisions Were Made Under the Influence, Polyamory, Too Many Food Metaphors, no infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5070865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themikeymonster/pseuds/themikeymonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Is Matt the jealous type?" Karen asks. </i>
</p><p><i>Later, Foggy will pinpoint that as the moment where this all starts spiraling out of control. Well - not out of control. They actually take an extremely controlled descent into depravity. Well, not depravity. </i><br/>-<br/>When your boyfriend is a blind crime-fighting vigilante, you need moral support. Foggy happens to be pretty damned good at being moral support! What could go wrong! (His weird, complicated feelings for Matt and Karen might be what goes wrong.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the properties of water (baby this is chemistry)

**Author's Note:**

> You can tell this is my first polyamory fic by the way it mostly reads as Foggy/Karen; my defense is that Matt and Foggy already have an established bond, Karen and Matt are dating, so the weakest side of this triangle was Karen and Foggy. I'll get better with practice.
> 
> The first draft of this was actually a lot more serious and stark, and originally Karen and Foggy showed a lot of PTSD. But then I ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ and made it fluff instead. Fluff is better for my mental/emotional state.

* * *

 

 

So yeah, the MattandKaren thing happens impressively soon after Matt bothers to explain to Karen just what was going on - admittedly after a judicious application of 'Do you even remember Union Allied?' from Foggy. Foggy is starting to think that it's less the 'blind thing' that attracts girls to Matt, and more of a 'Byronic hero' type thing. Vigilantism is the hot new fad, you see, and Matt's just jumped straight on that bandwagon, and away they go.

 

Okay, Matt did not jump on any kind of bandwagon. Matt saved someone's life when he was _nine years old_. He was just born that way, and everyone else was just along for the ride. Foggy knows this, but he likes to exaggerate in his own head; it's the only way to remain sane, you see. His idiot vigilante-best-friend likes to rely entirely too much on that 'I'm blind, I can't possibly fight crime!' excuse. 

 

Anyway, shortly after that conversation, MattandKaren happens. Which is - whatever. If there had been a betting pool at the office, Foggy would have won that shit - though there wasn't one, obviously, because they have an office of three people and two of them were the ones doing the hooking up and that would have been cheating.

 

Foggy isn't in the habit of lying to himself, whatever comes out of his mouth: he's a bit upset by this development. But he's also an emotionally mature adult (okay, so maybe sometimes he lies to himself, whatever) and so he takes to looking at it as a convenient consolidation of his interests. Instead of worrying about  Matt and Karen separately, he can now worry about them as a set. It doesn't really cut down on the amount of trouble either of them tend to get up to, but at least Foggy isn't giving himself whiplash while trying to keep track of it all.

 

Now that he and Matt are on more equal footing, Foggy can bicker with Matt about what an idiot he's being, or debate against Matt's more unfortunately predilections. This happens a lot. Matt makes a lot of bad decisions - a lot of well-meant ones, but still: badly executed. 

 

And Karen still comes out drinking with him, because there are only a few ways of dealing with the fact that her blind boyfriend is out there starting fistfights in back alleys. Foggy is basically the best friend ever. 

 

And it's enough. It is enough. That's what Foggy tells himself and it's even mostly true. If he avoids going home because his apartment is empty and everything crowds in and hangs heavily over him, then that's not really anyone's business but his own. If he often calls Marci and they talk about whatever bullshit is in the news - because they can't talk about work, they're lawyers for crying out loud - or she invites him over for some no-strings-attached, there's nothing wrong with that. It is enough, or it will be, one of these days, because Foggy can't drag anyone else into this mess while he's in the thick of it. 

 

And then Matt happens, as Matt is wont to do. 

 

\--

 

Okay, Matt doesn't  _happen_ , except in the way that it's exactly what he does. Foggy had seen the edges of it back when he thought that Matt was  _just a guy_ . Even then, something in his hindbrain had warned him this was going to flip his world upside down. 

 

Foggy, stupid kid that he had been back then, had been eager for it. He hadn't realized there wasn't a way off the ride once he got on. Foggy might be suffering the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, in the way that he doesn't  _want_ to get off the ride, even when it makes him miserable. 

 

Most of the time it doesn't, of course; he meets Karen Page on that ride, and Karen Page is kind of wonderful, and Foggy thinks that Claire Temple is probably pretty awesome even if she is too busy to have social face-time with the rest of them. Apparently, her short ride on the Daredevil Roller Coaster was more than enough for her, which Foggy sympathizes with even if it's not something he's interested in himself.

 

That said, Matt happens. Foggy just doesn't know that Matt has happened until the evening that he and Karen are out and halfway through their second drinks. A lull has fallen over their conversation, and Karen frowns down at her glass.

 

"That look," Foggy points out, "is  _way_ too serious of a look for tonight."

 

Karen glances at him through the fan of her pale lashes, a reluctant, absentminded smile pulling at her mouth. It had taken a lot of talking and even more crying and no little amount of fist pounding for Karen to work through -  _things_ \- but at least they were on the sunnier side now. Karen licks her lips and visibly debates for a second before she says, "Okay, I know -" and she swallows a bit, "I know you didn't know for much longer than I did, but. I have to ask. Is - Is Matt the jealous type?"

 

Foggy nearly chokes on his drink. "Oh, man," he says. "I wish I had better news for you, but - yeah. Yeah, Matt's - a very - very jealous person. He and jealousy are on first name basis." 

 

"Oh," She says, but she looks like that doesn't really answer her question, which. Foggy's pretty sure that's exactly what he did. 

 

Matt's not exactly a subject he wants to touch on tonight - at least one night of pretending their lives didn't revolve Matthew Murdock was appreciated, and often necessary - but it looks like Karen has concerns she needs to sort out, and so. Foggy sighs a bit, and then says, "And you're asking this because ...?"

 

Karen jumps a bit, like she didn't expect him to notice her preoccupation. Which is laughable - now that Foggy knows how much attention both Matt and Karen require, he never misses anything. "Oh, um," she says. She licks her lips again - she's going to chap them at this rate - and then takes a hefty, long drink from her glass, swallowing hard with tears in her eyes. They're watering as she looks at him, brow pinched, and says, "It's just - um - he gets. Cuddly? After our nights out." 

 

Foggy frowns at her, and searches for words, and finds he doesn't have any. "I don't - he could come along, if that - what," he says, helpfully. He might be slightly ahead of Karen on the drinks, but he doesn't have to go home mostly sober because his significant other might come home bleeding and in need of tender loving care. 

 

Granted, none of Matt's other girlfriends have ever come to him for advice. Matt is a private person and more than ninety percent of the time, Foggy never knew if he was dating someone or not, never mind how well it was going or - or how cuddly Matt was being at which times. Which was generally a blessing in disguise, or so he had thought until now, when Karen is coming to him and expecting him to explain Matt's weird boyfriend behaviors. 

 

"Yeah," he says at last, "I don't really have an explanation for that one. I'm not even sure Matt knows why Matt does the things Matt does, honestly."

 

"I'll drink to that," Karen says, and does. 

 

\--

 

Later, Foggy will pinpoint that as the moment where this all starts spiraling out of control. Well - not out of control. They actually take an extremely controlled descent into depravity. 

 

Well, not depravity. This might be the least depraved thing that Foggy's done in his entire life, and he is not a man who really engages in depraved activities, honestly. Or he doesn't think they're depraved - he respects that his parents and most of his family would firmly disagree, but eh, they're just not sexually liberated enough. 

 

But you see - this thing?  This thing isn't even about sex, really.  Foggy is  _used_ to it being about sex. First-year Foggy would have been astonished at the amount of orgies second-year Foggy was involved in. Hell, sometimes even Foggy was surprised by the amount of orgies he was involved in. Who knew that many orgies even took place on campus? For a while there, Foggy forgot what it was like to only have one partner in bed at a time. 

 

Of course, then he and Matt passed the bar and that meant he was an adult and he had a reputation to maintain. Something about being above reproach or something of that nature? (He tunes Matt out when he starts sounding like some guy born over a hundred years ago - out of self-defense, honestly.) So Foggy cut his long hair to a more manageable shoulder-length and shaved his beard off and lost contact with all his sex-buddies. 

 

Well, at least until Marci had come swanning back into his life, but whatever. The point he's trying to make was that he had become respectable, and then his best friends invite him to a threesome. It sounds like something out of a porno or amateur writing hour in some corners of the internet, only more bewildering because one was fiction and the other was his real, actual life. 

 

It's not the first threesome he's been invited to, of course - sometimes actual, real invitations to threesomes are more like a bad porn story than actual porn is. A few times, Foggy's actually had someone reach down his pants while a third person is just - randomly in the room, just ... watching. It's really not Foggy's kind of scene. To be fair, neither Matt nor Karen pull this trick, so kudos to them - 

 

But neither do they give him a call and ask him politely if he wants to join in, either. Apparently only Marci engages in the kind of etiquette that results in phone-call invitations, where expectations and rules are laid out bluntly and everyone is straightforward about what they expect out out each other.

 

No, Karen and Matt decide to go about this the hard, confusing, lack-of-communication way. Well, they don't communicate with  _Foggy._ He later finds out they did a lot of communicating with each other, and apparently Matt was supposed to be responsible for filling Foggy in, and  _wow Page, you really didn't think that one through, did you?_

 

So the whole escapade starts like this. 

 

\--

 

Karen says, "I want to try something."

 

Foggy doesn't exactly choke on his drink this time, but he does make a startled noise, and takes a longer drink from his mug than he really meant to, just so he could gather his senses around him. He says, "I don't think I'm drunk enough for this," because it seems like as good of a response as any. 

 

She laughs at him, bright and shocked, and shoves him. "No! I just - it's an experiment! A social experiment." 

 

"Still not drunk enough for this," he says ruefully, looking longingly toward the bar where Josie stands. Foggy participated in more than his share of social experiments in college. 

 

"No, come on, Foggy," she says, grinning. The serious kind of nervousness that she'd proposed 'trying something' with has faded, at least, which was kind of what Foggy was hoping for. "Look, it's nothing weird - too weird." She pauses, frowns thoughtfully and admits, "Okay, it's weird, but it won't be weird for you. I just. I have a theory, and I want to test it."

 

"I'm not sure I approve of this," he says, because he's been through this kind of thing too many times, but at the same time - it's Karen. Karen is like a cat - kind of aloof but affectionate and really curious and prone to getting herself into a lot of trouble if left alone. The logic follows that Foggy can't let her get up to things alone. 

 

"No, no," she protests, "it's nothing bad! It could be good! It - I just need ... more information." 

 

"Oh, shit," Foggy says, sitting back. 

 

"It's not bad," Karen insists. She's laughing at his moody face, but she's also learning forward with the kind of earnest expression that he finds hard to resist, and then she pulls the dirtiest trick in the book - she cuts a slanted look at him, through her long pale lashes, and bits her lip. 

 

It's not a seductive look in the least, but it plays on all of Foggy's archaic notions of chivalry that he'd thought Marci beat out of him with a riding crop and silk stockings in his size. He heaves a sigh and downs the rest of his drink and slams the glass on the table. "Alright," he says reluctantly. "Lay it on me, Page." 

 

It's not quite a smirk - Karen Page doesn't smirk - but her smile is wide and a little smug. "Okay, so - from now on, only touch me on one side."

 

"Only touch you on one side," he echoes, just to find out if he's heard that right. 

 

"Ye -" Karen interrupts herself with a bout of giggles. "Yes! I mean, just on one side. Left or right. But you have to remember which is is, and like - only touch on that side. Like hugs, and stuff." 

 

"Well, far be it from me to say no when a pretty girl asks me to touch her," Foggy says, and Karen throws back her head and lets out a peal of laughter. 

 

"Stop, stop," she asks, reaching out to pat his arm and shoulder. "This is for science, okay?"

 

"Oh, well, if it's for science," he says, "I mean, no offense, but I can't really think of another situation where I would touch you, so -"

 

That earns him the laugh he was looking for, but honestly: Karen is his best friend, first of all, and secondly, his other best friend's girlfriend, so. Yeah. He's not being entirely facetious, here. 

 

"To science and sociology," Karen says grandly, picking up the bottle and holding it toward the ceiling. She's looking entirely too pleased with herself - that 'I've tricked you into something I want and you're going to like it' look. Foggy groans a bit, recognizing it; Matt had gotten it often enough, back before he forgot how to make the good sort of terrible decisions. 

 

Foggy apparently has a type. Who would have guessed. 

 

\--

 

Matt already has Foggy pretty much trained to stand on one side or another to someone, and it's not difficult at all to adopt that same behavior toward Karen. Foggy picks the side opposite the one Matt favors, doesn't look too deeply at his own reasons, and makes sure that that any time he touches Karen, it's to that side. 

 

Matt stands to Karen's left, Foggy stands to Karen's right. Things proceed as usual from that point, as far as Foggy is aware. He doesn't exactly forget about the whole strange request, since Karen does make a point of brushing up against his shoulder and standing just a step closer than she used to. It's a - bizarre sort of torture, but considering that he spent a great deal of school with Matt grasping at his arm, it's not a stretch to extend his selective ignorance to that as well. 

 

Karen is his best friend and also in a committed relationship with Foggy's other best friend who can smell boners, probably, is the thing - okay, so Foggy is too old to spring a boner on the basis of a pretty girl touching his arm, but his heart hasn't gotten the message. Matt may have been inclined to ignore all the awkward moments Foggy had no idea they were having at Columbia, but Matt is the jealous type and Foggy isn't interested in tempting fate. So: selective ignorance.

 

So Foggy ignores all that byplay, which works up until Matt corners him with a frown and says, "Have you noticed anything strange about Karen recently?" 

 

"Well, I haven't been stalking her, if that's what you're asking," Foggy says, because this is their life now. Matt disapproves of Foggy stalking people in general, but there are things and people that need watching and Matt and Karen are entirely too noticeable to accomplish that. 

 

"No - not like that," Matt says, but his mouth twists a bit like he's not sure what it is he's even talking about. "I just - I thought, maybe, since you two hang out so much-?"

 

_Oh,_ Matt's talking about the touching thing. Well, honestly Foggy's not sure  _what_ that's all about, so he's not sure what he can tell Matt. He shrugs, putting as much of his ambivalence into it as possible. "I may or may not know about that," he says, "But your guess is as good as mine, buddy. It was a drunk-Karen plan, which means it's probably crazy but ultimately harmless."

 

"No, I'm - I'm pretty sure drunk-Foggy plans are crazy but ultimately harmless," Matt disagrees, with a small little quirk in the corner of his mouth. "Drunk-Karen plans tend to be a bit overly ambitious and just a bit reckless." 

 

"Okay, I could see that," Foggy says. "So basically the same as sober-Karen plans."

 

Matt hesitates for a moment, licking his lips and biting the bottom one thoughtfully for a moment. Reluctantly, he ventures, "I get the feeling this was a sober-Karen plan that needed a drunk-Foggy to agree to it." His brows arch high over the dark circles of his glasses interrogatively. 

 

"Hey," he says, holding up his hands. "I mean it when I said I have no clue what she's up to here. But she gave me the whole 'damsel in distress' look, Matt! I am weak to that! I shouldn't be but no one is a perfect human being." 

 

"Ah. Oh, good," Matt says, taking a weary breath. "I was trusting you to keep her out of trouble, I don't know why, you always let Karen talk you into the worst plans."

 

"Oh, like I could talk her out of them," Foggy says defensively. "It's go along with them or let her go on her own, what do you expect from me, Matthew? I am actual shit at letting my friends do stupid things without me."

 

Matt holds onto his exasperation for a few moments longer, but he gives in the way he always does; he gets a little wry, and little warm and a little fond. "Well, I guess that way I know I'll always find one of you not far from the other."

 

It almost perfectly mirrors Foggy's own thoughts, except for the obvious reasons. "Oh yeah," he says, "So try to bring enough bail money for the both of us, because the way things are going? It's going to come to that, and Karen and I are too pretty to end up in prison, Matt." 

 

"Well, I'll probably have to sell the office first, but -"

 

"Don't you dare, Murdock," Foggy protests loudly. "Don't you let it ever come to that! This is our child, Matt! You don't just - just sell your child!" 

 

Oh, good, Matt's laughing at him now. That's just rude; Foggy is being serious and emotional here. This is their  _dream_ , their  _baby!_ Foggy will sooner shank Big John than let Matt sell their office, and Matt better not forget it. 

 

\-- 

 

Of course, the logic follows: if Matt knows to find Karen and Foggy within a stone's throw of one another - so do Daredevil's enemies. If they can't find the vulnerable blind guy (how odd that he's never home but never out and about!) then the fat guy and the girl are their next best bet for Daredevil bait. Which. What the fuck. Seriously.

 

Seriously. 

 

Seriously, the less said about it, the better. They're lucky, Foggy thinks, while Karen is sobbing at a quiet scream into his torn and bloodied button-up. They were lucky it wasn't any of Daredevil's  _real_ enemies, that it was just one of the gangs that Matt spends his slow nights hassling. Because if this had been one of his archenemies - 

 

"Shh," he says, rocking Karen back and forth. He has pale blond hair in his bloodied mouth. His face is damp and salty. He doesn't know if it's sweat or tears or both. "Shh, Kare-bear, shh. We're not going to let anything happen to you, okay?" He strokes her hair, which only works until one of the guys on the ground twitches and groans a little bit.

 

Then Karen is tearing away from Foggy, and she is stomping on the guy with her heel and snarling "Stay down," and Foggy is only thankful that Karen does not have Matt's strength, or the guy would either be dead or needing a hospital asap. 

 

Why are all the people he loves beautiful and terrifying? 

 

He doesn't put his hands on her, just hooks his arm around her waist, loose and open, and guides her away. "Alright, voluntary manslaughter is still a criminal offense, sweetheart, so - maybe this way - you know I'd work my ass off to get you off on the lightest sentence - I mean, hey, who would even press charges? I saw nothing, honestly -" 

 

"I'm," Karen gasps, catching the words on the edge of a sob, "I'm so sick of this shit, I am - I am so - so tired of being scared -"

 

"Ah, shit," Foggy says, and pulls her in to give her the best kind of hug he knows how. Somewhere in the distance, Foggy hears a guy screaming. Matt had been a little slow on the rescue portion of the night, which was fine since Karen had that covered and Foggy's good at picking up slack, but apparently hell hath no fury like a vigilante with his girlfriend kidnapped, so. 

 

Normally, Foggy would hate the sound of those screams. But hey, he's been snatched off the streets and beaten and terrorized and had to watch them do the same to Karen, so. No one is perfect. 

 

Karen sniffles and draws back a bit, wiping the tear tracks out of her eyes. "What about you," she asks, glancing at him. 

 

"Psh. I'm fine," he says. 

 

Karen rolls her eyes, scoffing. "Last time you were fine, you had glass sticking out of your side," she points out. She has to dry her eyes the rest of the way with her raw wrists, and barely even winces about it. 

 

Karen has a point; Foggy hadn't been playing tough - he'd realized that he'd been in pain, but he sincerely hadn't felt the true extent of it. 

 

"I'm pretty sure I'm fine," he says, although he pats himself down. His ribs are tender, but he doesn't think anything is broken. They weren't really trying to hurt them, just - scare them, mostly, he thinks. 

 

"Other than your split lip?" she asks, and there is something terrible and soft and warm in her voice, and in her eyes. Her eyes drop to his bloodied mouth, and she steps forward and reaches up - 

 

"Oh, no! Not my face," Foggy says, a little loud, reaching up and touching desperately at where it feels hot and swollen. And it's tender, and tastes like metal, and he remembers, irrationally, a song lyric that said something about a kiss with a fist being better than none. 

 

Foggy respectively disagrees. 

 

"Man," he says, talking fast, "We are not going to get clients at this rate, not with my face looking like this. We gotta get some ice on it. I mean, I guess we'll scrape by in the mean time if we put Matt outside and make him smile at people, but." 

 

Karen makes some kind of strangled noise that's only part a giggle, and slightly hysterical. 

 

Giggles are much preferable to screaming sobs, Foggy thinks. Before he can try to gather up his scattered thoughts to try for another joke, Matt more or less materializes out of the darkness, stalking at them. 

 

For a split second, it feels a little like they're both going to be attacked by the Daredevil, but at the last second, the transition is made back to Matt. "Are you okay," he asks Karen, stopping himself just shy of probably sweeping her off her feet or wrapping himself around her and trying to be a shield, probably. 

 

"Um - yes, mostly," Karen answers, drawing herself together the rest of the way. "Just a little shaken up. Thank you." 

 

Oh man, Foggy felt awkward just standing here watching them do the whole 'No, masked stranger! I do not know your daylight identity, nor am I romantically involved with you!' dance. "Yeah, I'm gonna get her back to her boyfriend's apartment," Foggy says, "Where hopefully she can get a little TLC."

 

"No," Karen says, and "Um, I'll - I'll stay with you tonight." 

 

Matt's head twists between the two of them, and Foggy sympathizes, because what? "O - kay," Foggy says, because there's not exactly a compelling reason to disagree. He was hoping to trick Matt into coming home before someone ends up dead because Matt - Matt doesn't handle threats to his loved ones well, but. 

 

Daredevil doesn't have a foot to argue about that on, so he collects himself and says, "You should go. I've got some cleaning up to do here." 

 

Foggy doesn't envy those thugs in the least. 

 

It's not a short trip, and the two of them struggle to catch a cab, looking roughed up and bloodied as they do. Karen makes good on her words and comes back to Foggy's apartment, so he gives her the shower first and gets a clean shirt out for her and a pair of boxers he'd bought for Matt way back in school as a joke and never had the heart to throw out. 

 

Foggy practices an awful lot of selective, willful ignorance upon the sight of Karen, dewy and clean from the shower, in his shirt. He hands off the first aid kit to her with a promise to help her after he's had his own shower, and leaves her with the TV on and a bowl of freshly microwaved oatmeal with plenty of butter and brown sugar. 

 

"This is practically 'The Superhero Girlfriend Package Lite,'" Foggy says to Karen when he gets out of the shower. He's aching and bruised, but his initial assessment must have been correct - and it seems unlikely that Matt would have let Karen go that easily if she was hurt, either. 

 

"Mmm. I'll do without, thanks," Karen says wryly. "I mean, I actually won't, but I certainly won't complain about getting the 'lite' experience, this time."

 

"Matt's going to kill himself to make that a 'never,'" Foggy points out. 

 

Karen clearly realizes that. "Yeah, well, that's clearly unacceptable," she says, and she looks up at him a little desperately. "So I'm going to need your help to keep it from coming to that." 

 

"Yeah, I'm already kind of busting my ass to keep it from getting that far," he says flatly, but when she just looks at him, he can feel his resolve crumbling away. Along with being shit at letting his friends do stupid things without him, he's pretty terrible at saying 'no' to them, too. "Alright, fine," he says, weary. "What do you want me to do?" 

 

Karen doesn't get a chance to answer because that's when Foggy's Goddamned window more or less slams open. Foggy had forgotten that he'd taken to leaving that one unlocked, because - well, because obvious reasons, thank you anyway. It's just that nothing ever came of it to the point that he's forgotten, and yet: here Matt is, pouring through it like blood and ripping the mask from his head and zeroing in on his girlfriend. 

 

Karen stands from the couch and Foggy excuses himself to the kitchen to futz around a bit because his nerves are honestly too jangly to deal with any more selective, willful ignorance tonight. He wishes he had tea or something, but that's not really something he stocks in the house. He has chocolate syrup and a fresh container of milk, though, so hot chocolate it is. 

 

When he gets back to the living room, bits and pieces of Matt's suit are scattered across the floor and couch and he can hear the shower going. 

 

"I think we're going to single-handedly advance laundry day by a week," Karen admits, and thanks him as she takes a cup from his hand. So apparently he can look forward to both Matt and Karen in his clothing, which is. Yeah. 

 

"If laundry day is the worst thing that happens to me for the rest of the month, I will not complain," Foggy says, setting his and Matt's cups on the table and kicking at a stray belt on the floor nearby. 

 

They're probably both doing a fairly stand-up job of repressing the hell out of the memories of what happened tonight, but the moment he sits down on the couch, Karen joins him and curls up against his side until he settles his arm around her shoulders.

 

"Times like these, I am glad I kept the sleeper sofa," Foggy says. "I love you and Matt very dearly, but I am not surrendering my bed to the both of you, tonight."

 

"We could go home?"

 

"Nope," he rejects, barely pausing for breath. Foggy can't really stand the thought of sending them both out to go back to either of their places, not tonight. It's not exactly that he doesn't want to be alone, but it's already so late, and he just - he needs to know they're somewhere safe, not out there on the streets. 

 

Granted, Matt and Karen, especially together - are probably two of the safest people in the world even when they go out wandering around on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, but emotions and fears aren't always rational, so. 

 

Matt comes out of the bathroom, mostly dry, and it doesn't really matter how accustomed Foggy is to seeing Matt fresh from the shower - thanks, Columbia! - it's pretty much a treat every time. Plus, that's his shirt. Foggy hopes that Karen getting up to meet Matt with the cup of hot chocolate is enough to distract from anything too embarrassing that his heart and/or body might be doing, because the only thing worse than nursing unrequited and inappropriate feelings for your best friends is the awkwardness of knowing that at least one of them knows exactly  _what_ things it all does to him. 

 

"Foggy," Matt says, cocking his head in his direction. "Are you okay? Karen said - but -"

 

"Yeah, fine," he says breezily, waving the concern away. "A few cuts and bruises, but it's nothing."

 

"Nothing, he says," Karen says dryly, cutting Matt a dry look that's probably wasted on him unless Matt's senses are even sharper and creepier than they've previously discovered. "He took a real beating from those assholes."

 

"Yeah, well, what can I say," Foggy says dryly. "I have extra padding and high school taught me how to take a hit. I used to be one hell of a baseball player, you know." 

 

Matt hums but takes Foggy's word for it - or otherwise senses that he's not that hurt, or senses that he's telling the truth, or something of that nature. "Well, if we're really staying here for the night, we'd better get the sofa unfolded," he says, his mouth twisting into a slight grimace.

 

"Your princess skin will handle it, Murdock," Foggy says dryly, getting up. 

 

"Or," Karen says brightly, moving over to help - she is apparently no stranger to unfolding sofas, which is something to think about another time, because Karen is just about as private as Matt is (well, so is Foggy, to be completely honest; he fills the air with details without really saying much at all, so they're all secretive, damaged people, yay) - "Or," she says, "we can filch Foggy's sheets and all just sleep on the sofa?"

 

"You're joking," Foggy says flatly. He can't think of a single thing less restful than being crammed into a small, flat, uncomfortable folding sofa with not one, but both people he feels complicated but warm and fuzzy things for - right after having a fucking horrible night. 

 

"Well, at this point," Matt says helpfully, "You'd just be a bad host if you kept your bed." He smiles sunnily at Foggy, because he's an actual asshole. 

 

"What the fuck," Foggy says indignantly, but - doesn't actually say 'no'. 

 

When Karen actually makes good on her threat and returns from Foggy's bedroom with his bedding, Foggy kind of stands there, mildly appalled. Apparently they're serious about this. And - okay, whatever. He's actually too tired to complain about it, or feel very awkward, or - 

 

Or, okay, actually, after being kidnapped by thugs and beaten and watching Karen actually try to kill a guy, Foggy might need a bit of being crammed into a sardine can with her and Matt. Just. To feel a little bit more like he's not going to crawl out of his skin. Warmth and human contact, right? Foggy is crazy big on human contact - it's his favorite thing. 

 

It had initially been a sticking point in his early friendship with Matt, because Matt - didn't tend to like it. Or he shied away from it, anyway, until at last they came to an unspoken compromise: Matt initiated the contact. Matt was willing to do all kinds of touching so long as it was him doing it, which Foggy resolved a long time ago not to think about but recently figured was due to Foggy's previously mentioned complicated feelings.

 

Which probably also explains why Foggy lets Karen get him down on one side of the makeshift bed. Matt gets stuck in the middle, possible because Foggy and Karen are of one mind when it comes to making sure Matt doesn't go out wandering the city at night like a lunatic when he doesn't have cause to, and Karen even goes so far as to cuddle up to Matt, slinging her leg over his. 

 

Matt makes a noise that indicates this isn't the usual arrangement they have, and Foggy says, "Oh, shut up and deal with it, Murdock," to which Matt snipes "I'm trying," and Karen says, "Both of you put a sock in it." 

 

Foggy is a gentleman and knows how to listen to a lady, and so he does. And it's not the most comfortable of arrangements - the sofa 'mattress' is thin and hard, and his bedding only does so much, plus Matt is made of all hard angles that he seems to have a preference for digging into Foggy's tender places, and Karen scratches him with her nails and he wakes up with blond hair in his mouth again,  _somehow_ \- but. It's one of the better nights of sleep that he's gotten in a while. 

 

\--

 

Which. You know. Is all fine and good. Foggy can be the weird queerplatonic aspect of Matt and Karen's actual romantic relationship. It's honestly just an extension of the weird queerplatonic dynamic he and Matt had in school (Thanks, Kathy, for raising his awareness of this word, no matter how continuously baffled he is by the platonic part of the queer aspect, because what he feels for Matt is not platonic at all, or rather some of it is but it's largely not, but whatever -) 

 

He should, he thinks, be a little bit grateful that Matt didn't get wrapped up in someone equally as jealous as Matt himself tends to be. Foggy's pretty sure that most girlfriends would not be as understanding as Karen, nor would they actively encourage that aspect of his and Matt's friendship. 

 

So this is basically the best possible outcome, Foggy decides.

 

Karen and Foggy go out for drinks when things are getting rough with Matt Daredevil-wise. Otherwise, the three of them meet up at Foggy's to eat pizza and drink beer, or whatever their take out choice of the week was. Movie nights are held at Karen's - or podcast night, or audio-book night, or whatever-the-fuck they found on the internet to occupy them for a few hours. 

 

Foggy never gets so used to it that he forgets to make sure he has an invitation before showing up. Matt's apartment is likely a den of sin, and as much as the idea tickles him, Foggy knows to save both soul and heart and doesn't even venture in that direction. 

 

"Den of sin," Karen chokes out, clutching desperately at Foggy's shoulders and collapsing into another bubbling fount of laughter. 

 

"Shuddup," Foggy says with as much goodwilled dignity as he can muster, which given the number of drinks they've had, isn't much. Drinking always makes things pleasantly soft and kind of loose and swooshy - at least, the good kind of drinking, not the drinking-to-forget - and Foggy feels all of that, but he also feels bubbly - carbonated. Like champagne, or a rum-and-coke. Cheap and homey and bitter and syrup-sweet. God, he loves everything. He loves his life. He loves - he loves Karen. And Matt, of course, but that's a given. "It makes perfect sense," he tries to tell her. "It's a – listen. Matt is living in sin, and he - for one - should know better." 

 

"We are not living in sin," Karen says indignantly, but it's all overplayed, for how she pounds the heel of her hand into his chest. "Living in sin is a very - very particular thing, and we are not doing it." 

 

They totally are doing  _it,_ even if 'it' isn't 'living in sin,' Foggy thinks, because his thoughts are inappropriate and he is a bad friend who may think about that more often than is healthy for heart or soul. "Okay, so you're not living together unwed," he admits, because he actually does know the phrase. "But the moment you move in - sin! All the living in sin." 

 

"It's not sin," she protests with a laugh, and ends up hiccuping in the middle of it. "It's not sin. Even if I move in with Matt, it won't be - but I hope to be living in sin by the end of the year." 

 

She delivers this with such a determined expression, with such earnestness and sincerity, that Foggy promptly loses his breath laughing and has to fall back against the side of a shop, narrowly missing the display window. "You have a timetable," he wheezes, "You - Miss Karen Page! You have scheduled your sinning, I am impressed." He tilts his head back until his scalp grinds against brick, raking his hair back from his face. He's shut his eyes at some point and thinks to open them a sliver to look at her, because she is just the most ridiculous - he loves her, he does, and Matt, and they are both the most ridiculous - 

 

She's wobbling on her heels, she's so drunk, and she's beautiful and radiant and golden, smiling at him with such heartfelt affection that it stoppers the laughter in his throat and compresses his chest almost violently. Karen wobbles, and her lashes flutter across her cheeks, and she reaches out to brace herself on his shoulder, stepping a bit closer. She's flushed with drink and her lashes are long and golden and her mouth is very pink and it parts a bit and Foggy thinks: Holy shit, she's going to kiss me.

 

At the last second, Karen drops her forehead onto his shoulder and giggles, clutching at the front of his shirt. "Have to stay on schedule," she says, and draws back and pulls her hair back from where it's sticking to her melting make-up and smiles sunnily at him.

 

Foggy gets his heart started again and says, "You're the worst!" Because she is, at least when Matt's not being the worst. They are clearly competing for the title. He clutches at his own chest to imply a heart attack and Karen laughs at him, and he is neither relieved nor disappointed because Karen was not really about to kiss him. 

 

\--   
  


So the thing with Marci, as friends-with-benefits as it is - well, actually, mostly it's a relationship best described as 'with-benefits.' Foggy and Marci are not friends, at least by Foggy's definition of the word, nor are they lovers by any stretch of the imagination. Foggy's not entirely clear on what it is that they are, except that it's on Marci's terms and he hasn't had a lot of cause to disagree with those terms because they seem to work pretty well for the both of them. 

 

Mostly, what happens between Marci and Foggy  _stays_ between Marci and Foggy. She and Matt have never gotten along, possibly because Matt has never learned to share and Marci thinks she shouldn't have to. Foggy, on the other hand, is a champion sharer, if only because his family was too large and too poor for any of the kids to have something that belonged to only one of them. Foggy mostly made things work back in school by carefully managing his time, making sure Marci knew that Matt came first if only because Matt was actually emotionally involved in their friendship beyond simply 'mine,' and not talking to either of them about the other. 

 

To this day, other than when Marci helped them with Fisk, that's how Foggy handles it. Marci doesn't want to be part of their band of Robin Hood heroes, and Foggy makes doe eyes at all the amenities that Marci's paycheck allows her but knows better than to think he's going to abandon ship - like, ever. First of all: loans. Second of all: Matt's a fucking vigilante, and he needs to stay on top of that with Karen and Claire and try to make sure Matt makes it through the days and nights. 

 

So KarenandMatt go out and about on a date, because every night can't be vigilante-night and Karen-and-Foggy-drinking-night or a couple-and-third-wheel-night. It's the perfect opportunity to meet up with Marci, and though she makes him work for it, she agrees to meet him at a restaurant for a not-date. 

 

"My treat," she decides with one of her bear-trap smiles, "You wouldn't catch me dead anywhere you could afford." 

 

"My banking account thanks you, but my pride does not," Foggy admits, and she gives him a cool look like she's considering breaking out the riding crop again, and not in the fun sexy way. "Man can't survive on sex alone, Marci, he needs some pride," he says defensively, and Marci considers that for a moment and decides that it's not worth arguing. 

 

They meet at an Italian place, which is probably the last nail in the 'not-having-sex-tonight' coffin, but he's getting one hell of a meal out of it so Foggy's not going to complain. It's a nice place, of course, so they linger after the meal is done to savor the wine, at which point - swirling her glass like the best kind of Bond villain - Marci says, "So, since you and Murdock flew the coop, there's been another disability hire." 

 

She doesn't mean it, merely calling it the way Landman and Zack saw it, but Foggy rolls his eyes and says, "Matt was more than that, and you know it."

 

Marci makes a noise that says she hears his point and doesn't care. "She's just an intern for now," she says, "But she's clever. Not as good as you, maybe, but certainly more than ambitious enough to make up for it." She smiles then, sharp and white and charmed. "I think I'm going to fuck her." 

 

Foggy thinks wryly that if this was anyone else, he'd be choking on his drink. He's no longer surprised at anything Marci does - she knows what she wants and will do just about anything to get it, even if it's not terribly smart or moral. "Oh, good, sleeping with an ambitious intern. No way that could possibly ever go wrong." 

 

Marci hums, and then looks at him with a sly little smirk. "I could be convinced to share," she says. 

 

The only reason Foggy doesn't choke this time is because he's not in the middle of taking a drink. He stares at her with a mouth full of bread stick, while he tries to reprocess the sentence. 

 

Marci looks entirely too smug, her smirk stretching into a Cheshire smile. "She's exactly your type," she says. "Leggy and ginger and about as friendly as a stray cat. The practical application of your -" She flicks her hand at him, a flash of nails the same champagne rose of her lipstick "- expertise could be very beneficial." 

 

"I thought you weren't inviting me into anymore three-or-moresomes since that one incident in L2?" Foggy says, because he can't really think of anything else to say. School was different - everyone experimented in school. Foggy wasn't sure how to approach something like that in real adult life; though he is feeling very tempted, as unimpressed as he is with Marci's summary of 'his type'. Foggy has one - Foggy has about three - but finding someone attractive does not make them his 'type.'

 

Marci huffs, rolling her eyes. "Yes, well, you're not responsible for all closeted little bisexuals unable to cope with making out with a boy," she says. "I have since made rules against drunken hookups. So, are you in or aren't you?" 

 

Foggy takes a drink from his glass, transparently stalling. He's tempted - very tempted, because Marci's good at what she does, but she's even better with a third in play. He doesn't think he can fuck his cares away, but he  _can_ forget them for a while, and - 

 

Marci's face changes, going a little slack and annoyed. "You're fucking kidding me," she says flatly, and then takes a long, deep drink from her glass. 

 

"Foggy! Hi!" 

 

Foggy turns, startled. "Karen?"

 

Karen beams at him. She's smiling a little too wide, and there's something faintly manic in her eyes. She looks very nice, her hair twisted up with hair pins in a way that Foggy's long since speculated is for Matt's benefit. Not that he spends a lot of time thinking about Matt touching Karen's hair, or Karen in general. That would be weird. 

 

Speaking of, here comes Matt, slinking up behind Karen somewhat reluctantly with a slightly mulish expression, cane in hand. He's actually shaved, which is something. 

 

"Hi, Marci," Karen says sweetly, "What a lucky chance this is! Matt and I were just going to get dessert! Why don't you come with us? We'll make it a double date." 

 

Marci curves her mouth upward, which only resembles a smile if Foggy were to squint at it sideways. "Hmm. I don't know," she says, setting her wine glass down and giving her nails a look as if they would ever be anything less than perfect. "A double date with Bulldog Murdock - gosh, how will I ever hold back my enthusiasm?" 

 

Despite her venom, Marci signals for the check and picks up her purse. And then - weirdly (or maybe not) - Karen starts up a rather one-sided conversation with Marci, which leaves Matt wide open. Matt looks like he knows it, too, knuckles white and jaw set. 

 

"Dude, what the fuck," Foggy hisses at him. 

 

"Don't ask me," Matt says, just as prickly; he doesn't hiss, a murmur drops his words too low for easy eavesdropping. "This wasn't my idea."

 

Foggy takes a look around at the restaurant, and another as they follow Marci and Karen outside. It's feasible that Karen would be able to spot Foggy and Marci from the outside - Karen's got sharp eyes and a sixth sense - but it's even more reasonable that Matt somehow knew they were there using one of his creepy, invasive senses. That would go further in explaining the stubborn twist of his mouth when he'd followed Karen over the table, anyway. 

 

Not being his idea didn't mean Matt didn't have his part in it, but - that did mean that this was Karen's idea. 

 

Foggy tries saying something a few times, inhaling and opening his mouth, but nothing seems adequate. Finally, he settles on a terse: "You can't actually ask me to move my dates with Marci out of the city." 

 

Matt makes one of those faces that means he's just stepped into something disgusting - not that Matt has ever stepped into anything disgusting, not as long as Foggy's ever known him. Matt makes this face from time to time when criminals and other scum tell him something he's not pleased to hear. "I'm not asking anything," he says, sharp and pointed. 

 

"Yeah, no, I heard you the first time about this not being your idea," Foggy points out with a huff. "What is this? Is Marci involved with something weird? Or the restaurant?" 

 

"Weird?" Matt echoes, even as some of the tension leeches out of him. 

 

"Yeah, like - you know. Weird," Foggy says, gesturing towards his face. Matt's head cocks interrogatively, and he repeats, "you know,  _weird_ ." 

 

"No, I don't know," Matt says.

 

Foggy's at least eighty percent sure that Matt's just being an asshole right now. "Come on, buddy," he complains. "I love you and Karen more than is probably healthy, but I need more than friendship fueled cuddles every once in a while." 

 

Matt tilts his head back in consideration of Karen and Marci, who are smiling at each other like dogs baring teeth. He licks his lips and says, "Well, that I know." 

 

Everything remains on a pleasant note, more or less, even through dessert. Still, Foggy sees his opportunities for indulging in naughty threesomes with Marci and her intern dwindling with every passing minute. It's not that he particularly wants to indulge, but he'd like to make a decision about that on his own and not because the offer gets withdrawn. 

 

Just about the time that he thinks he's going to be ditched to Matt and Karen's not-so-tender mercies to either awkwardly third-wheel the rest of the night or at least head back home alone, Marci takes hold of his arm. It's a deceptively light grip. 

 

"Well," she says, "I hate to break up the love fest - oh, wait. No, I don't. Still. Foggy owes me an at least somewhat satisfactory end to this night, so toodles." She flicks her manicured hands at Karen and Matt - Matt's got that thin tense twist to his mouth and Karen's doing her smile-and-beam-and-smash-their-balls-with-suits routine, which is - and then Foggy's being dragged down the street, away from his friends. 

 

Foggy knows Marci too well by now - he can tell by the way she  _walks_ that he's not going to get laid, who is she trying to fool? 

 

"Alright, Stahl," he says, "What the fuck is this about?"

 

Marci gives him a withering look, and tosses her head. "Fuck you, Nelson," she says blandly. "What the fuck was all of that back there?" 

 

"Hey, I didn't call them!" 

 

Marci hums, then accepts this with a second sharp glance at him. "Color me impressed," she says reluctantly. "You managed to find someone who could pull that giant stick out of Murdock's ass." 

 

"Uh, no," he says, "That was a group effort."

 

"Not that," she says impatiently, "Although, yes, that, too. I was referring more to the fact that if you're not careful, those two are going to piss all over your doorway like territorial dogs warning all intruders to step the fuck off." She cocked her head. "It would almost be charming if it wasn't so primitive and controlling."

 

Foggy groans. "I know, it's the worst," he says. "I gotta have a talk with them before I meet someone I want to date romantically."

 

Marci stares at him for a moment, says, "Oh, Foggy," and pats his cheek like he's some small pathetic dirty thing. "At least I know someone reasonable has their hands on you," she adds thoughtfully. "Shame Ms. Page ended up at your firm. She could have really gone places. Maybe put secretarial work behind her and get a real career."

 

That's a compliment from Marci, honestly, but Foggy still scowls and says, "No cool, Stahl. Not cool." 

 

–

 

Okay, so Foggy mostly understands that the whole outing with Marci wasn't going to end in a fun way, and as Marci had something going on with an intern back at Landman and Zack's, that unless he joined in, Marci was basically off the table for the next few months - Foggy gets that. Generally, he's also okay with his friends being possessive of him, or otherwise he wouldn't have lasted one month with Matt once Matt got it in his head that Foggy was the kind of person he wanted to keep around.

 

But breaking up his date like that was a bit over the line. 

 

"What the hell was that, Page!" 

 

Karen bites her lip, glancing at him through her lashes. Her face is tilted downwards and she looks so innocent and sweet that Foggy almost wants to forgive her except that he's seen his little sisters pull this look on Dad  _all the time._ "I just - I wasn't thinking at the time," she says. Then, earnestly, "I'm sorry, Foggy." 

 

Foggy tries glaring her down, he honestly does, but then she scoops up the disposable cup from the table and holds it out to him and makes a hopeful expression and  _God_ is Foggy a pushover for people he loves. He forgave Matt years of lying and becoming some kind of whackjob vigilante and scaring him every night for the rest of his life that his friend is gonna die and die horribly - and he forgives Karen for being weird and possessive or whatever it was that led to Karen interrupting his face-time with Marci. "Goddammit," he sighs, just to make himself feel a little bit better. "Fine." He takes the cup from her - he can smell that it's his favorite - and sulks about it. "You're forgiven." 

 

The fact that Karen looks honestly pleased and happy about it - not just relieved - is his only real balm. 

 

"Are you serious," Matt complains, easing the door to the office open, "That's all it takes? Your favorite coffee?"

 

"She gave me some really sad repentant looks, Matt," Foggy says defensively as Matt eases into the office, like he still wasn't sure there wasn't going to be some kind of fight. Foggy hadn't been aware that Matt was so close to the office when he'd chosen to confront Karen, but - well. Privacy was nonexistent when Matt was on-scene anyway. 

 

Karen has a bit of a vague grimace on her face, picking up the mail that she'd brought inside to look through it. "Oh, god, don't even lie," she mutters. "You play him like a fiddle and he lets you." 

 

"What! No. No, I don't," Foggy objects. Matt looks similarly mutinous and offended by the accusation. 

 

Karen glances at the two of them, huffs, and rolls her eyes. "Uh huh," she says, moving away toward their pathetic excuse of a kitchenette. 

 

"You do not play me like a fiddle," Foggy says sternly at Matt. 

 

"No," Matt scoffs, like the entire concept is unthinkable. 

 

Satisfied with the level of agreement he's received, Foggy takes himself and his coffee to his office. He actually gets all the way seated and his laptop open before he realizes that he's just been played, exactly like a fiddle. 

 

"Dammit, Murdock!"

  
\--

 

And all of that is fine and good, but that's when things escalate - possibly because bother Karen and Matt are possessive, jealous assholes. Well, Karen is an adorable, jealous asshole, but still. Things escalate, as they tend to when Matt and Karen are involved. 

 

It starts as a fairly normal Daredevil-and-drink night, but when Foggy gets Karen back to her apartment, she smiles at him - wide and loose and adoring - and says "you'd probably better come up and take a breather, Foggy."

 

Something small and quiet at the very back of Foggy's head suggests that this might not be the brightest idea, but he's loose and swooshy himself and that smile on Karen's radiant face is making all the champagne bubbles in Foggy's chest sparkle.

 

Do champagne bubbles sparkle? Well, his are, regardless. 

 

"That sounds like a brilliant plan, Lady Page," he says, and Karen clasps her hands to her face and giggles with delight, so he pointedly offers his elbow to her. 

 

She takes it, and this is pretty much the blind leading the blind, and at one point they fall over each other and sit on the stairs for a while, giggling to themselves like idiots.

 

"Your apartment sucks, Karen," Foggy complains. "No elevator at all? That's bullshit."

 

"No, no - I know, but it's only four stories," she protests, like that makes it alright, and then they stagger up and make it the rest of the way to her apartment. 

 

"You and Matt are a match made in heaven," Foggy declares, wandering into her kitchen after her. "Between - between Matt's senses and your senses - sensibility - sensibilities - both of your places smell really nice." It comes out weird and earnest and heartfelt, which okay, he really does mean it, but he doesn't mean it  _that_ much. 

 

They get into an argument about whether or not they can drink tea instead of water to ease the hangover in the morning - Foggy's pretty set on water, but Karen hates the taste of it - it's  _water_ , what's to taste - well, okay, Foggy has tasted some pretty foul tap water but - and they eventually settle some of the orange juice that Karen has in her fridge. 

 

Which is why, several hours later, Matt clambers in through the window to find his girlfriend and best friend cuddling on the couch and watching infomercials with various degrees of hilarity and disgust. 

 

"Matt's back," Karen says giddily, spotting him first since she's closest to the window. 

 

"Yay," Foggy says, and Karen says "Yay," too, only hers is infinitely more adorable. 

 

"Yay," Matt agrees, still sounding a little rough and grating from the streets. "Why are you watching infomercials with - orange juice?" 

 

"We couldn't drink  _water,_ " Karen says, all disgust. 

 

Matt considers that, says, "Hmm," and peels his mask off, working on his buckles next. 

 

"Matt's stripping," Foggy points out, because - well. He is. 

 

"Yay," says Karen, and in the spirit of brotherhood, or sisterhood, or whateverhood, and also in the spirit of Matt being pretty hot, Foggy says, "Yay," too. 

 

Matt pauses, and when this earns him 'boo's in stereo, laughs somewhat dryly and moves his strip tease to the bathroom. 

 

"I think," Foggy says thoughtfully, "That's my sign that I have overstayed my welcome."

 

"No," Karen moans. She's already holding onto his arm, and her head is heavy on his shoulder, but she tightens her legs where they're twinned around his ankle. "Don't go, Foggy. You're so warm. And cuddly. And you smell good."

 

"I am very cuddly," Foggy allows. Everyone always agrees on that: he's cuddly and he smells good. "But, considering that I meant to leave to my place -" he glances at his watch, but honestly, reading it takes too much energy, he hazards a guess based on the fact that Matt showed up -" _hours_ ago, I should probably go."

 

Karen ignores this completely. "You smell like you should be in my apartment," she tells him. "Matt! Doesn't he smell like he should be in my apartment? My apartment," she tells Foggy sincerely, "Smells good, you said so yourself, so. You have to stay." 

 

It sounds like a compelling argument to Foggy, but he doesn't really want to leave, so that might be personal bias. He considers this further, and then says, "Karen Page, are you a dragon and are you hoarding good-smelling things?" 

 

She hums like this pleases her, and says, decisively, "Yes." 

 

"Yay," Matt says, dryly, as he comes back into the living room in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and Foggy, obligingly, says, "Yay." Matt grins and says, "Karen, you can't keep Foggy if he doesn't want to stay."

 

"But he does want to stay," she says, lifting her head to look at Matt narrowly. Then she looks around at Foggy, all wide-eyes and uncertainty. "You do want to stay, right?" 

 

Foggy groans in protest of being asked in front of 'Lie Detector' Murdock, but maybe he's sobered up a bit from when they first came home, because he doesn't actually  _say_ it. "If wishes were fishes," he says, "But I need an actual bed or I foresee a lot of chiropractor visits in my future, Kare-bear."

 

"You can use my bed," Karen says brightly, and specifies: "With us!"

 

"Karen," Matt says, reaching forward and disentangling Karen from Foggy, "Your bed is not big enough for all three of us." It's all patient and kind and politely ignoring the stupid way that Foggy's heart flips because:  _yes._ Yes, Foggy would like that. Foggy would like that a lot. 

 

Karen has terrific ideas, Foggy thinks to himself; why does Matt think they're all bad again? 

 

Well, whatever, it was time for good little Foggys to go home to their beds. 

 

While Matt hustles Karen off to the bathroom, Foggy turns off the TV and takes his and Karen's glasses to the kitchen. No point in letting the orange juice dry inside it, he thinks. Karen and Matt's voices are hushed in the bathroom, but Foggy mostly ignores it the way he ignores all the nice little comfortable, homey things that Matt and Karen do. He runs water in the glasses and yawns widely enough to crack his jaw. He wasn't very sleepy before, too busy getting worked up about infomercials, but it's starting to set in. If he gets a cab, it'll be expensive and also he'll fall asleep and that's just not good. Walking it is. 

 

"I'm off," he calls out as he opens the door. "Don't forget to lock up behind me." 

 

"Wait, wait," Karen protests, and she and Matt emerge from the bathroom. "You can't leave yet, we have a present for you." She's pushing Matt along in front of her, and he's moving kind of grudgingly, but his mouth his curled into a reluctant smile so he's not entirely against it. Better-than-humoring, but still not eager. 

 

"Wait," Foggy muses, "aren't I, as the guest, supposed to bring the host a present? Like a bottle of wine or champagne or - oh, I brought champagne, actually! Metaphorical champagne - figurative champagne. Not actual, literal drinking champagne. Which is kind of lame, now that I think about it. I will literally bring champagne next time."

 

Matt and Karen are standing there in front of him with kind of soppy grins on their faces, in what amounts to sleepwear. This would normally send Foggy into new and expansive rambles; no one tells a story like Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, especially when he's nervous. Instead it turns his mouth to cotton and sticks his breath in his throat and he very much doesn't want to go home. He wonders if it's too late to take back what he said about the couch.

 

Karen bites her lip. She turns it into a bitten smile, glancing up at Matt and saying, "Well, go on." Urging him forward with her prodding fingertips, she looks up-to-no-good. It's a very good look on her, Foggy muses, before becoming distracted by the way Matt ducks his head, huffing out a laugh.

 

"Alright," he says, then "Foggy - just - don't freak out." 

 

Foggy says "Freak out?" 

 

Matt steps forward and right up into Foggy's personal space, which really isn't that alarming, honestly, and then he wraps one hand around the back of Foggy's neck and places the other on his chin - what the hell, was this some kind of martial arts move? Was Matt going to pretend to break his neck? 

 

Matt kisses him. 

 

Soft - and warm - that's what Foggy's stuttering brain informs him. Matt's all hard angles and rough stubble, but not with Foggy - not now. He leans into Foggy and their bodies know one another, even standing toe-to-toe, and it should feel weird - it should feel weird - 

 

It doesn't feel weird, it feels familiar. It feels like a long time coming. 

 

Oh, holy shit, Foggy thinks when Matt pulls away. He is fucking ruined. He's  _ruined._

 

"My turn," Karen chirps and doesn't even properly shove Matt out of the way before she grabs Foggy by the face and kisses him, too. It's a lot sloppier - for one, they're both drunk, still, and there's the awkwardness of Matt's half-stuck between them, making a vaguely alarmed noise, and between them they're pulling Foggy off his feet. She tastes like toothpaste and mouthwash and she bites his lip, and never mind, Foggy didn't know what ruined was before. Ruined is standing in the doorway to Karen's apartment with a giggly blond climbing over her boyfriend to kiss Foggy and Matt grasping at Foggy and laughing a protest. 

 

_Sex,_ his mind says, because it's inappropriate that way,  _with these two would be_ amazing. Which Foggy already knew, because obviously, but having actual tangible data was good, too. 

 

Matt yelps, because he's barefoot and Foggy's just stepped on his foot, and Karen smacks a kiss on Foggy's face and then shoves him backwards. "Okay," she says, hanging over her boyfriend, "Present delivered! Have a goodnight, Foggy!" She waves. 

 

"Karen, you," Matt says, but never actually manages to specify what he means by that, just kinds of grapples her across his shoulders. Karen shrieks, mostly in surprise, but then she's laughing in delight. "Goodnight, Foggy," he says, aiming a grin Foggy's way, "We'll - um. Talk? About it in the morning?" And then he pulls the door shut. 

 

What the fuck. 

 

\--

 

First of all, Foggy does not call anyone to freak out on. He's already learned his lesson about trying to work out his Matt-related problems with other people, because other people tend to start looking vaguely alarmed when he tries to indicate the breath and depth of the issue at hand. Now there's a Karen Page involved, and Foggy's fairly certain there's not a person on the face of the earth that understand Karen, because like Matt, she's a lonely-only one-of-a-kind. 

 

There's the not-so-small problem of the fact that Foggy's dreadfully short on people who can maturely handle moresomes. Marci is extremely good at it - Marci also doesn't understand feelings. Or more correctly, Marci thinks things like 'in love' are strange and confusing and simply clutter the matter. Foggy can't call Marci and talk to her about it, because she already despairs of the fact that Foggy might be (okay, is) in love with both his friends. She isn't going to take the idea that they may-or-may-not love him back very well. 

 

So Saturday morning dawns (okay, Saturday nearly-noon hangs in the sky, but whatever) and Foggy does not know what to do with the fact that he knows he didn't dream up last night when his two idiot best friends kissed him goodbye. He would accuse them of screwing with him, but as big of an asshole as Matt can be, he wouldn't be an asshole about  _that_ , and Karen is only an asshole about secrets and information, never feelings. 

 

Foggy pulls his covers over his head and doesn't think about it for, like, twenty more minutes or so. Then he gets up and takes a shower and tries to get the wretched taste out of his mouth. 

 

He barely gets out of the bathroom when his phone goes off. Caller ID says 'Matt.' Foggy glares at it suspiciously before answering. "Did you time it like that on purpose?" he demands. 

 

"Time it -?" Matt sounds faintly confused. "No. I had a faint idea when you'd be awake, but I'm not - I'm not outside your building or anything." By the end of that, he sounds a little irritated, the way he does when Foggy accuses him of spying with his senses. 

 

"Really," Foggy says, nonplussed for a second. "That doesn't sound like you." 

 

There's a terse moment of silence; Foggy supposes that he doesn't hear a huff because phones have got noise-cancellation technology going on these days, or something. He knows Matt well enough to hear it in the silence, anyway. "Karen said we shouldn't ambush you," Matt says reluctantly

 

The tension goes out of Foggy all at once. "Well, God bless Karen," he says, dryly. "Alright, so I guess that this is when we talk about - it." 

 

"Yeah," Matt agrees. "Can I come over?" 

 

"Probably a better idea than talking about it over the phone," Foggy says tersely, and Matt says, "Right," and hangs up. 

 

Foggy doesn't feel much like eating, but he's pretty sure he hasn't eaten since lunch yesterday, and anything that he has to 'talk about', especially with Matt, shouldn't be done on an empty stomach, so he makes himself a bowl of cereal because there's a small chance he'll be done with it before Matt arrives. 

 

He's actually both done with it and has run water in the bowl before there's a knock at the door. It's the last weekend of the month, which means that Nelson and Murdock is not open, and so Matt isn't dressed in a suit for once. Foggy feels like they've forgotten how to wear normal clothes - Matt looks slightly awkward and uncomfortable in his stupidly soft sweater and slacks. 

 

"I am getting an overwhelming sense of déjà vu," Foggy says as he lets Matt in. 

 

"What," Matt says, then "Never mind."

 

"Yeah, 'never mind,'" Foggy says, before Matt can get to using his words and spinning things in a way that will leave Foggy annoyed and unable to disagree, "What the hell was that last night, Matt?" 

 

Matt opens his mouth, closes it, and shifts from foot to foot. He apparently did not prepare any kind of statement at all for this, because he is some kind of idiot. "It seemed like the best way to show that we were serious." 

 

"You were serious - about a threesome?" Foggy asks skeptically. "I'm guessing you're aware of my opinions on that sort of thing, but there are better ways to bring that up - not that I'm very inclined in the first place, considering -" He waves his hand between the two of them, then gestures randomly in the direction he thinks Karen's apartment is in. 

 

"No," Matt says, looking slightly offended. "It's - um." He licks his lips and rubs at his stubble, which just goes to show how uncomfortable he is with the conversation, but hey, fuck him, he was the one that kissed Foggy all warm and comfortable last night, like that was something they'd been doing for years. 

 

They have not, by the way. Foggy is too smart to have placed his mouth anywhere near Matthew Murdock, because Foggy had thought he was going to need to survive being hardcore friend/Catholic-zoned. The bisexual part of this escapade doesn't confuse him in the least, because he has seen Matt accidentally flirt with guys before before realizing it and fucking right off. The timing, and the how, and the - well, the fact that it was happening at all, actually - that's the part that confuses him. 

 

"Look," Matt says, terse and uncomfortable, "You know this - this whole - I don't do well with relationships."

 

"I think our entire graduating class from Columbia knows you don't do well with relationships," Foggy says flatly. 

 

Settling his hands on his hips, Matt scowls at him, like he's the one that's being unfair. "Yeah, I know," he says, matching Foggy's tone. "You know why? Because I'd let my guard down, and I'd - do something, and they'd get suspicious, and from then it was only a matter of time before everything would fall apart. You and Karen - you're the only two people who never -"

 

"Yeah, let's not go there," Foggy interrupts, rubbing at his face. "That's not a good - let's not go there." 

 

Matt goes from man to wounded puppy in .5 seconds flat. "Foggy," he says. 

 

"Not the conversation we're having here," he says. 

 

"It's part of the conversation," Matt disagrees, but the reminder that Foggy's forgiven but not forgotten his transgressions has thrown him off his game. "You and Karen - you know there are no other people I'd rather do this with. Do everything with."

 

He seems to feel this explains himself well enough, which means that Foggy has to put his Matt-to-English translation skills to work, and comes up with, "What, wait. You mean a ménage à trois?"

 

"Oh, good," Matt says, "You speak French."

 

"Shut up," Foggy says, "I don't speak French. There are seriously only so many artsy indie threesome films a guy can watch without picking up a few things. It kind of came with the lifestyle. You're kidding me." Suddenly some things are becoming a lot clearer. Monogamy tends to be the default, so unless someone is blunt as hell, Foggy tends to overlook any implications otherwise. It's the safer, saner bet. "Oh my God. This was sober Karen's plan! And you knew!"

 

"I might have figured it out, yes," Matt says. 

 

"-  _seriously_ ?" He's probably not doing himself any favors by being so blatantly surprised, but - seriously. 

 

"Seriously," he says with a chuckle and the start of a smug grin. Not just smug. It's the return of that 'I've tricked you into something I want and you're going to like it' look - the one this all started with. 

 

"Oh, what. What's with that look," Foggy demands, "Get that smug smirk off your face, this wasn't even your plan. You didn't succeed at anything. Let me get this straight. You and Karen. Actually,  _Karen_ , since apparently this was her plan all along. You two want to - start a - a committed -" He waves his hand, because he's actually at a loss for words. " _Thing_ . With me?" 

 

Matt has staunchly refused to look any less pleased with himself, at least until 'committed' came up and then he scowls. " _Very_ committed," he says, like Foggy has any doubts about just how jealous Matt tends to be. How is this even going to work with the three of them and Matt's jealousy? 

 

Hell, how was this going to work with  _Karen's_ jealousy, as she is the one that actually came over and interrupted his date with Marci? Wait, never mind; clearly neither of their jealousy extends to the other, or Foggy would have noticed something going on a long time ago. 

 

"I'm really not a stranger to casual poly-relationships," Foggy says, ignoring the dark look that crosses Matt's face, though he's going to remember that because  _holy shit_ , "but - uh. There weren't really feelings involved there. And I am pretty sure. I am pretty sure you and Karen have feelings involved." 

 

Matt cocks his head at him, his condescending 'you're being dense' gesture, brows raised. "Foggy, there are actually feelings involved on every side of this triangle," he points out, a little grumpily. Foggy says "there are what" but Matt ignores him, shrugging as he says, "If you don't want to -"

 

"I didn't say that," Foggy says. 

 

A smirk flits across Matt's face, but he sobers almost immediately. "Then fine, we won't. No harm, no foul," he says. "But if you do, then - we should try. Karen seems to think we can make it work."

 

"Oh, and Karen always behaves in rational ways," he says, which is a bit mean since Karen isn't there to defend herself, but  _really_ . Karen is frighteningly clever, Foggy gives her that, but her emotional intelligence is not strictly any better than Matt's. But - 

 

Matt has his jaw firmed and his hands on his hips, all signs of just how uncomfortable he's feeling, but he's not making excuses. Foggy thinks about Matt being a jealous person who knew for years that Foggy was extremely attracted to him but never took advantage of that. He thinks about what signs Karen must have picked up on that Foggy himself missed (perhaps for the sake of his sanity) that any of this was even a possibility. 

 

It could end disastrously. But so could a lot of things that he's let Matt talk him into. 

 

"Alright, fine," he says.

 

Matt almost looks surprised by his answer. He says, "Yeah?" and he starts looking pretty smug again. 

 

"Matt, I am so serious about the face, cut it out," Foggy says, but Matt, in no mood for chastisement, kisses him quiet.

 

\--

 

Which is how Foggy ends up dating his both of best friends (despite what Matt says, Brett is his almighty  _frenemy_ ) although he supposes that he should really think of it as that's how Foggy gets a two-for-one deal and has conveniently proven his bisexuality -  _in your face_ , popular culture that conveniently erases his fellow bisexuals the moment they enter a committed relationship! 

 

Well, that's not quite how it goes, because Matt doesn't speak for Karen, of course. Foggy actually engages in follow-up with Karen,  _just to make sure._ As very much interested as this whole idea as he is, Foggy believes in clear and honest communication, and although Matt says she started it, and Foggy's pretty sure his hindsight is 20/20, he's not taking chances. 

 

(Okay, so maybe it's more like the next time Foggy sees Karen he asks " _Really,_ " and she shrugs with a smug little smile and says "I like chocolate and I like peanut butter, but peanut butter cups are admittedly much better than their components," which Foggy can hardly disagree with. He likens the three of them to s'mores, which starts an entire argument because that's just the way Matt is.

 

Okay, maybe he actually arranges a sort-of-date with Karen, far away from Matt, and it goes like this -)

 

She lets him pay for her coffee and there are no seats available so they stand near the hardy potted plants in the nook in the corner where few of the other customers will approach them. Karen learned things from Ben Urich, and Foggy thinks that she doesn't realize that even now she's playing spy games, but they're useful when you're dating a vigilante, and so he watches and learns, too. 

 

"Look," he says, "I know all the old proverbs about not looking a gift-horse in the mouth, but if I'm going to be riding a living animal, I want to know if it's going to throw me -"

 

"What are you  _talking about_ ," Karen asks. She gives him a look that's slightly alarmed but incredibly charmed all the same, so apparently she likes awkwardness, because Foggy feels  _incredible_ awkward right now. 

 

"I'm just saying," he says defensively. "If this was some kind of - of drunk idea or whim, or whatever, that you somehow managed to over-commit to and don't know how to back out of gracefully - I find that hard to imagine, really, you're pretty graceful - then this would probably be the moment to say so." 

 

Karen hums into her cup of coffee. She's folded in on herself as is her habit, but it looks less like something stuffing itself into a corner and more like something coiled and waiting. "Foggy," she says, "How are you not understanding my peanut butter cups metaphor?"

 

"I understand your peanut butter cups metaphor perfectly," Foggy says. "Not everyone likes peanut butter cups. Some people, like my cousin, actually have nut allergies." 

 

Karen huffs quietly with a reluctantly amused curl to her mouth. "Well," she says, "I clearly do not have a nut allergy, and for the record, I happen to  _love_ peanut butter cups." She glances at him sideways with a smile, wide and warm, that makes his heart flip over in his chest, because it's stupid and easily moved. 

 

And Foggy does love s'mores, and peanut butter on graham crackers, and chocolate covered pretzels, and  _dammit_ , now Karen has him thinking in terms of food metaphors. He takes a rather sullen drink from his cup, because he's a bit hungry. 

 

"Also," Karen says, her wide, warm smile curling at the corners like a satisfied cat, "You're sweet and funny and kind of amazing, and you swing a mean bat." 

 

And of course at that moment, his awkwardness around people he's attracted to suddenly acts up so that he exclaims, half-accusing and half-incredulous, "Karen Page! You're attracted to dangerous men!"

 

The smile drops from her face and her mouth gapes open in offense. "Shut up," she says, tucking her hair behind pinking ears and attempting to hide her smile behind her cup; she glances around like he just accused her of dating Daredevil at the top of his lungs instead of only implying so. 

 

He's not sure why that's a surprise. Karen had been very clear on her loyalties to the Masked Man after that first meeting. And - admittedly - she took to trusting Foggy a lot more after he stalked her and bashed a couple of heads in. 

 

"This has actually turned my world upside down a bit," he says. "First of all, that you've actually fallen into a cliche, and secondly, that apparently I count as 'dangerous.' I think my mother would have an actual aneurysm - from laughing." 

 

"No," she objects strongly, going so far as to hold up a finger. "No. Because you and Matt are not actual dangerous men! I mean, you're dangerous, yes, but for the right reasons, if that - if that makes any sense." She frowns a bit, like she's not entirely sure it does. "So, you're wrong on both accounts." 

 

"I am wrong on neither account," he disagrees, because his bullshit senses are tingling. "Look, as both a lawyer and a person who is not always the loveable butterball my mother tried to shape me into, I admire both your tenacity and your ability to twist words around - but also as that person, I remained unconvinced. Unlike Matt, I don't believe in guilty pleasures - it's fine if you love cake. That's the point of cake." Then he shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "You know, I was really trying not to think in the terms of food metaphors anymore. We're going to need to stop for donuts." 

 

Karen makes a longing face. "Donuts," she says. "I really shouldn't."

 

"Karen," Foggy says, rolling his eyes, "Donuts are fried cake. What did I  _just_ say about cake?" 

 

"Okay, right," she says with a laugh. "No guilty pleasures." Cupping her coffee in both hands, she takes a long drink, and then glances at him slyly. "So," she says, "Just so that we're on the same page, you do know we're on a timetable, and you need to be ready to move into Matt's Den of Sin before the end of the year." 

 

Foggy almost drops his coffee, because he'd already figured out that this whole thing spanned to  _months_ ago, but - " _That's_ what you were talking about?" 

 

Karen beams at him, flushed and tickled pink, quite satisfied with herself; as well she should, Foggy reluctantly admits, as it seems that her plan has gone exactly as it was meant to go. 

 

So yeah - basically all of Foggy's qualms about joining in on a threesome now that he's supposed to be a respectable adult abruptly disappear when it's Karen and Matt asking, which is - but there is very little he wouldn't do for Karen and Matt. He loves them both with the kind of all-encompassing  _terrifying_ love that mothers warn their children about, which is probably fine. It's probably fine, because none of them are the sort of people who engage in half-measures, and he thinks that maybe (just maybe) they've found themselves in good hands.

 

"You are actually a little bit terrifying," Foggy says admiringly, and Karen actually preens a little bit. He puts his elbow out, and she takes it almost automatically, and God but does he love her and Matt to dangerous levels. "Onward, Lady Page. Toward donuts!" 

 

"Toward donuts," she agrees readily, "for great fried-cake glory." 

 

Matt will complain about it for weeks afterwards, but Foggy's pretty sure he and Karen will be able to figure out  _some_ way to make it up to him. 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _he loves them both with the kind of all-encompassing terrifying love that mothers warn their children about_ \- Referencing those image sets that pull the lines from [this](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=642) A Softer World comic.
> 
> The s'mores argument went a little like this:
>
>> Foggy thinks a long time on the ways he loves Matt and the ways he loves Karen and what loving them together is going to be like, and Karen's funny little snort when he'd said it, so -
>> 
>> "I am not a graham cracker," Matt objects, when Foggy brings it up at lunch. 
>> 
>> "Sure you are," Foggy says, "the ones with the cinnamon and sugar. I mean, clearly Karen and I are the sweet ones in this relationship, which makes us the chocolate bar and marshmallow respectively -"
>> 
>> "I am not a chocolate bar," Karen says with a sniff. "And Matt is really not a graham cracker. Oh! But I could be a graham cracker! One of the honey-sweetened kind. Not the kind with cinnamon and sugar." 
>> 
>> "You could be the marshmallow," Matt says mutinously, "Make Foggy the graham cracker. Graham crackers leave crumbs, like Foggy does, all over everything." 
>> 
>> "Mm. No," Karen says. 
>> 
>> "Now you're just being rude," Foggy agrees. 
>> 
>> Karen turns back to Foggy. "He's definitely the chocolate bar. Matt, you're definitely the chocolate bar. Bitter and dark and sweet, and with a low melting point." 
>> 
>> Matt flushes, looking so offended that Foggy is immediately forced to agree. "True fact, Murdock," he says. "If we are the tasty s'mores cooked in Hell's Kitchen, you are definitely the gooey, sinful chocolate center." 
>> 
>> "Also," Karen says brightly, "if Matt is chocolate and Foggy is marshmallows, then together, you're hot chocolate with marshmallows!" 
>> 
>> Which is taking the whole metaphor a step too far, and Foggy's not going to think about it any longer, no matter how reluctantly interested Matt seems with the concept. 


End file.
